plot-bunny: Highlander / House MD

[marbleglove]

Before I get in to my plot, there are a few disclaimers:

I watched the first half of the first season of House MD and loved it. It was awesome!

Then I saw the second half of the first season of House MD and got pissed off for a variety of reasons. (1) Volger was a crap business man. There were so many flaws in his ideas that I was surprised the doctors weren't rolling their eyes at him during the meetings. If anyone is interested, I could go on a rant just about that. Instead, (2) the whole ex-wife needing help for her husband was soap-opera enough, the stupidity of putting someone with a serious illness under the supervision of a diagnostician was just pushing the envelope. (3) House was at a stable point of insanity and roughness, a point he had been in for years, why the sudden descent then, as marked by the season's progression? And finally, (4) there really is a point where the craziness is too much of a liability for the genuis to compensate for. He would have gotten fired, and Cuddy and Wilson could have been unhappy at his loss, but they still would have kept him out of the hospital for messing things up.


Anyway, having gotten that off my chest, I have an idea for a Highlander / House MD crossover.

Princeton University (I'm assuming this is the university associated with Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital) has been approached by a scholar who has recently inhereted both a great deal of money and large selection of medical records of unpleasant medical experiments. The scholar offers to donate the money to the university in exchange for use of office space and picking the brains of local professors/doctors for analysis of the medical records he has. The university jumps at the chance: not only money, but unique medical experiments that they couldn't in good conscience duplicate but which they would love to see, since the experiments have already happened anyway.

Methos (who is the scholar, of course) won't give them unsupervised access to the records (whch he inherited from Kronos, of course. The money's from Kronos, too.)

Thus Methos is hanging around the hospital and the university, everyone is talking about him and the research he's doing, and House is irritated when Methos asks for his assistance reviewing something and even more irrirated when he's not asked for his assistance.

Methos is interested in the research, repressing a feeling of guilt for the crimes documented, greiving the death of his brothers, and finding an amusing distraction in taunting House occasionally.

House is interested in the research, repressing a feeling of guilt for being intrigued by the crimes documented, and finding his relationship with Methos to be amusing, frustrating, and intriguing. The scholar is lying to him! He's not sure what about, but it's about something!

Everyone else is interested, appalled, and horrified by both the research and the developing friendship.

Luckily, House gets an interesting case to solve, and thus distract him from Methos.

Less luckily, the case is a rare poisoning and archaic form of assassination. Methos knows it well, and successfully identifies it.

House is ever more intrigued by the is man who's records (which he's looked up, of course) would not indicate he had a practical knowledge of poisons and assassinations. Theories abound.

And that's actually the extent of the plot that I have. More of a colision of characters than anything else.

Comments

[lita-of-jupiter.livejournal.com]

interesting, I quite like some of your points and if you add the Wilson brand of humour to the other two, with him trying to get the destructive energies focused elsewhere the hospital would really go into a mess ( I can imagine epic video game tournaments being organized)

it would also be a nice oportunity for methos to update his medical knowledge since it would have been a long time since he'd studied medicine


i agree with your take one the first season... I watched it mostly after i had gotten addicted to the series and mostly let myself be led by sarcasm and the relationships on the show... several times I wanted to cringe though....


I can imagine Cuddy being a pre-immie just to complicate things, she would certainly make a good one and i would be a reason for why she cant have kids.

[marbleglove.livejournal.com]

Wilson is wonderful and he'd definitely be perfect in this, but I haven't a clue how to write him. Somehow he's just a bit out of my grasp. (Possibly the same features that keep House interested are the ones that make him tricky to write, for me at least.)

Plus, it would need to be written by someone with a decent amount of medical knowledge, or at least the willingness to research it, because it would be awesome to see Methos and House arguing and Methos having all of these thoroughly out-of-date ideas and House sneering at that even as he's confused by evidence of a really peculiar education from a clearly brilliant man.

And Methos would find House a wonderful person to bounce his ideas off of since House would be willing to expound upon the errors and give him pointers to the updated information without all the simple steps that he doesn't need and that most educators would consider necessary. Plus, as careful as he is to hide who he is, he'd probably still find it funny to taunt House with various inconsistencies, and see if the brilliant diagnostician ever comes anywhere near the truth. If anyone would randomly manage to guess "immortal", it would be House.

Although other immortals probably haven't come his way, much. After all, they don't get diseases and House doesn't do trauma medicine, so it's unlikely he's ever been surprised by a reviving corpse.

Adding a new immortal might be fun, though. Someone does revive in front of him, miraculously better. So then House has to be his ass-self in order to keep a healthy guy (or Cuddy, as the case may be) confined to the hospital and still running tests. The only symptom now is the intermittent migraine that comes and goes, coincidentally whenever Methos is in the area. Heh. What does that do for your differential diagnosis, Dr. House?

[lita-of-jupiter.livejournal.com]

H "Well while our resident researcher is a pain, I doubt he can cause migranes by just standing still in his office two doors down!"

[slvrcrystalc.livejournal.com]

Have you read some of the other House/Highlander crossovers? I think there's only two others out there. ((and a remix))

[marbleglove.livejournal.com]

I've read a couple of really good House/Highlander crossovers:

Win, Place, or Show by Ishafel
http://hlfiction.net/viewstory.php?sid=1173
is fun.

But my favorites are definitely:

Tazlet's
The Curious Incident of the Doc in the Night-time
http://tazlet.livejournal.com/68067.html

Part 2: Physician, Heel!
http://tazlet.livejournal.com/68267.html?format=light

and the remix by Iferion:

Archiater in Noctem
http://community.livejournal.com/remixredux08/49441.html

If there are others, I'd love to know about them.

[slvrcrystalc.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I had forgotten about Win, Place, or Show by Ishafel. I counted both of Taz's fic as one. The other fic I was thinking of was one where House was an Immortal and has known Methos since his Death days, but I've no idea where it is posted because it wasn't really good enough to put in my favs. Oh, found it. Here it is: This Farcical Embrace (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5263666/1/This_Farcical_Embrace)

Oh, and there seems to be a House/HL/SPN in ff.net. 5 Times House Didn't Cure Methos (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3628358/5/5_Times_House_Didnt_Cure_Methos) by wren10514.

I am forever burdened by the urge to prove myself wrong.

Are you sure you don't want to write that crossover? It's a very very good idea. Though, it would probably involve a ton of research... erk. Yeah, it's good as is.

The later Seasons of House are better than the first, I think. (Though, I'll skip any involving Detective Tritter when re-watching)

[marbleglove.livejournal.com]

I'd forgotten about the "5 Times" story. That was a good one. I'd never run across "The Farcical Embrace" before, so thanks for the link. You're right, it isn't great, but it does have some interesting ideas. And watching the ducklings trying to figure out both Methos *and* House would be almost as amusing as watching House trying to figure out Methos.

The Scientific Method is all about being driven to prove yourself wrong. You're in excellent company.

I've actually only seen the first season and then snippets of future episodes. Although I've been told that I must go and see the recent episode "Wilson".

But alas, no, I do not currently intend to write this. I have one fanfic that I need to finish up and then I'm going to try for some original fic. Wish me luck with that.

[slvrcrystalc.livejournal.com]

Good luck with your original fiction! I hope you get published and make big moniez so you'll have more time to write Highlander-fic. *innocent eyes*

I haven't seen the latest episodes, sadly. I work when they come on, so I see them online when they come out on fox.com (and I remember to look them up). I shall go see "Wilson" though. The first couple episodes of the season were so good, I'm not sure how they'll top them.

[marbleglove.livejournal.com]

Hopefully I can just figure out how to shift from using other people's characters to developing my own universe entirely. But I don't think I'll ever leave the Highlander fandom entirely. It is just too awesome.

I always forget about fox.com. I could go see "Wilson" without waiting for it be on dvd at the local rental store. Cool.

[slvrcrystalc.livejournal.com]

Rental store!? The horror! If I can't see it on line, I go to my Library and get it. Much cheaper.

(Have you no pictures to use for your livejournal? There's entire communities dedicated to pics in all fandoms, it seems.)

[marbleglove.livejournal.com]

My library is woefully lacking.

Maybe I'll deal with pictures over the holidays. I've just been being lazy.